Face it, reKISStance is futile

The KISS Army is now taking teenage recruits, and the newcomers are loving it. Claire Halliday reports.

"They're old but they're still rock gods," says Luke Thompson, 19. "I've always wanted to see that old-school stadium rock."

Thompson is explaining why, despite his teenage years, the hottest ticket in town for him this year is tonight's KISS concert.

With the makeup on his face a tribute to his idol, bassist Gene Simmons, Thompson, a Monash University engineering student, seems unperturbed that his "rock gods" are old enough to be his parents. "Actually, they're probably older," he says.

His friend Josh Spiegel, 21, has seen KISS before. "I was pretty impressed," he says. The apprentice fitter and turner from South Caulfield says he originally dismissed the band as "a circus act". Then he listened to the songs.

"They're just big, heavy, fat rock'n'roll," Spiegel says. "Yeah, they're old, but last time I saw them they went longer than younger people's concerts. They still do all the tricks."

Mark Bridge is president of the last remaining KISS fan club in Australia, the Queensland-based Inner Sanctum, which has been operating since 1988. With 500 online members who receive regular email updates of band news and gossip, Bridge, 39, says that the fan base is steady, with "new recruits stepping up as older recruits decommission their KISS Army kits".

Describing the average original KISS fan as teenage and male, Bridge says the attraction now is to a broader audience, with the rite of passage being passed along to children and even grandchildren of 1970s devotees.

It's the reason that life as a member of KISS tribute band KISSTROYER is a busy one for Andrew Kyriacou, 31. The tribute band formed two years ago and tours nationally, doing around 30 shows a year to a steady base of fans who need to get their fix of live KISS music in between tours of the real thing.

KISS, Kyriacou says, is "kind of like the Beatles on steroids". A perfect combination of "theatre and great rock music".

"Being a KISS fan is like being part of a big family," says Glenroy sales rep Robin Brewin, 34.

For her partner, Dean Stewart, 33, a printer, it's a shared passion and one of the reasons the couple first got together almost four years ago.

"She was over here and we were meant to be going out and she just started looking through all my old memorabilia and she just stayed," Stewart says.

Admittedly, there is a lot to look at. With a soundtrack of KISS CDs on high rotation, the walls of their rear rumpus room are festooned with framed album covers, banners and concert photos. Against one wall is a display of KISS dolls. Against another, a shelf of plastic-wrapped magazines that date back to the 1970s and 1980s - each one containing a snippet of interview or photograph detailing the band's rise and rise to success. To stay updated with modern-day KISS happenings, Brewin says that not a day passes when they aren't logging on to KISS online (www.kissonline.com) - the official US-based site for the band. "We were having a look just before you knocked on the door," she says.

It's a niggling annoyance to Stewart, who has a KISS T-shirt "for every day of the week", that he missed out on the band's first Australian tour in 1980. "My mum couldn't afford the ticket and I think it was only $13.50." But he says that every gig he's seen since, has been a "great night out".

With their young children at home with the babysitter, Stewart and Brewin will attend two of the three Melbourne KISS shows this time around - a tour that is rumoured to be the last.

"They are our idols," Brewin says. "We dream about them. Their music plays a huge part in our lives. Being a KISS fan is not a cult or anything. It's just special. They make you feel special."